February 20, 2020

(JTA) — It was a rough welcome for Mike Bloomberg.

The one-time Republican took a beating Wednesday night from the five other candidates on the Democratic debate stage in Las Vegas, who took aim at the former New York City mayor’s record on policing, treatment of women and support for workers.

The onslaught against Bloomberg comes as polls show his presidential campaign making significant inroads among American voters. Unclear is whether Bloomberg’s tough night will stunt his climb — and short-circuit the emerging matchup of two clear Jewish front-runners.

The attacks began just seconds into the debate, when Elizabeth Warren likened Bloomberg to President Donald Trump, and continued unabated for two straight hours. At one point Chuck Todd, one of the moderators, even asked him, “Mr. Bloomberg, should you exist?”

That question was inspired by Bernie Sanders’ proposition that there should be no billionaires, and Bloomberg’s answer was clear.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve worked very hard for it, and I’m giving it all away.”

Bloomberg sounded less confident in other moments, such as when he rebuffed calls to let people who have sued him share their stories publicly.

Bloomberg’s 10-week-old campaign has yielded significant support in national polls, sometimes landing him second to Sanders, the other 78-year-old Jewish grandfather in the race. But it has also elicited critical coverage of his track record as a businessman, New York City mayor and philanthropist.

His competitors had clearly studied the criticism, lodging 45 attacks on Bloomberg, according to NBC News’ “Attack Tracker.” That was more than twice the number of attacks made on Sanders, the second-most attacked candidate.

In addition to criticizing Bloomberg’s treatment of women, Warren also challenged his apology for stop-and-frisk policing in New York City. She said Bloomberg had apologized for the outcome of the policy, not its design.

“If you want to issue a real apology, then the apology has to start with the intent of the plan as it was put together,” Warren said. “You need a different apology here, Mr. Mayor.”

And Joe Biden, the former vice president who like Bloomberg is aiming to appeal to centrist voters who do not identify with Sanders’ vision for democratic socialism, joined Warren in calling on Bloomberg to release those who have sued him from non-disclosure agreements that bar them from discussing their experiences publicly.

Bloomberg rejected the demand, as he has in the past, saying that the agreements would stand and adding, “None of them accuse me of anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”

Then Biden stepped in.

“You think the women, in fact, were ready to say, ‘I don’t want anybody to know about what you did to me?’ That’s not how it works,” he said. “The way it works is they say, ‘Look, this is what you did to me,’ and the mayor comes along and his attorneys say, ‘I will give you this amount of money if you promise you’ll never say anything.’ That’s how it works.”

Amy Klobuchar criticized Bloomberg for not yet releasing last year’s tax returns, eliciting one of the night’s more quotable lines from the businessman: “I can’t use TurboTax.” Bloomberg said he would release his taxes once his complicated return is complete.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, pointed out that Bloomberg — and Sanders — have not historically been affiliated with the Democratic Party.

And Sanders and Bloomberg sparred over their competing visions for the country’s economic system.

After listening to Sanders outline his vision for democratic socialism, in which all Americans have what the Vermont senator has called “economic rights,” Bloomberg said, “We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work.”

Sanders quickly pushed back.

“Not communism, Mr. Bloomberg,” he said. “That’s a cheap shot.”

The debate was light on foreign policy, meaning that one major issue important to many Jewish voters — Israel — did not come up (except when Klobuchar, eager to prove her foreign policy knowledge after an embarrassing gaffe this week, said she had learned that the Knesset, Israel’s governing body, has 120 members).

Voters will get another chance to hear from the candidates in less than a week, when they debate in advance of the South Carolina primary Feb. 29. That contest will be the last before Bloomberg begins to appear on primary ballots.

Bloomberg’s robust campaign operations and essentially limitless funds mean that a single difficult night is unlikely to destabilize his push for the presidency. The candidate embraced that dynamic in his closing comments Wednesday night.

“You can join me at MikeBloomberg.com, too,” he said, nodding to his competitors’ requests for donations. “But I’m not asking for any money.”

BERLIN (JTA) – The shooter who murdered 10 people in the German city of Hanau was a far-right extremist who reportedly said he wanted to exterminate people from Asia, North Africa and Israel.

Germany’s main Jewish organization expressed shock over the Wednesday night attack, which  the country’s attorney general is investigating.

Police in Hanau said the shooter, identified in news reports as Tobias R., born in 1977, and his mother were found dead early Thursday morning in his home, not long after his reported shooting spree in two hookah bars. Among the dead were several Turkish nationals, as well as one Bosnian and one person from Poland.

The alleged shooter left behind a video and a 24-page manifesto in which he said certain peoples “must be completely destroyed,” according to German news reports. A spokesperson for the attorney general told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he could not confirm the existence of a manifesto or video, but that further information would be released later on Thursday.

The attack is the latest in a string of high-profile attacks by far-right extremists in recent months. Both the Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue in Halle last October and the assassination in June of a pro-refugee politician, Walter Lubcke, were carried out by assailants affiliated with the far right.

Responding to those attacks, German officials have said they are ramping up scrutiny of far-right groups. But they are seen as playing catch-up after years of focusing anti-terrorism efforts largely on Islamic extremists.

In a statement Thursday morning, Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said he worried about “the safety of minorities in Germany, and of those who are committed to helping them.”

Schuster and other prominent German Jews have said recently that an uptick in right-wing crimes and the rise of a far-right extremist political party, the Alternative for Germany, had made them consider leaving Germany.

The German media said the manifesto was written in January and intended as a “message to the German people” and a declaration of war. Their unconfirmed reports state he blamed “certain individuals in my own country” for the fact that “we now have populations, races or cultures amongst us that are destructive in every way.”

Tobias R. also reportedly had posted a video on YouTube last week containing conspiracy theories about secret powers steering both the United States and Germany, and expressions of hate aimed at Arab and Turkish migrants.

Police did not know of any specific threats to Hanau’s Jewish population, Oliver Dainow, representative for the Jewish community there, told JTA on Thursday morning.

The community, with some 200 members, already had beefed up security following the violent attack outside the synagogue in Halle. Two passersby were killed in the attack. The alleged perpetrator, who had tried and failed to break his way into the synagogue, was later arrested.

“For anybody who has these kinds of ideas in their head, Judaism is not far away,” Dainow told JTA.

While the most recent violent attacks have had a right-wing extremist background, Dainow said he could not point to one specific political direction as being most threatening.

“There is a toxic environment in general,” he said.

In his statement, Schuster said German authorities had ignored warning signs for far too long.

“It is high time that all democratic entities stand together against the threat of right-wing extremism and also of Islamist terror,” he said. “Politicians, law enforcement agencies, the judiciary and civil society have to take responsibility.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who canceled travel plans in the wake of the Hanau shooting, said Thursday in a public statement: “Racism is a poison. Hatred is a poison. And this poison exists in our society and is responsible for far too many crimes.”